Location: New Bern, North Carolina

Challenge: Implement a comprehensive AMI network to improve electric and water systems and better manage energy consumption and costs.

Solution: Eaton’s Cooper PowerE series Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and YukonE enterprise software platform enabling improved demand response program, enhanced monitoring, simplified customer service and accurate outage management.

Results: Accurate, real-time electric and water monitoring allowing the City of New Bern to enhance demand response programs and better respond to system disturbances.

Background

New Bern is a city in Craven County, North Carolina, located 112 miles east of the state capital of Raleigh. The city’s electric utilities department involves three delivery points from which the City of New Bern receives electricity to supply approximately 21,500 electric customers and 15,000 water customers. 

Challenge

For more than two years, the City of New Bern was exploring strategies to mitigate power supply costs, which take up 75 percent to 80 percent of the electric fund budget each year. After exploring available options, the city looked to implement a complete advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) solution for both its electric and water customers. “We quickly recognized that a meter automation project would improve New Bern’s electric and water systems and provide customers with the data and tools necessary to better manage their energy consumption and costs,” said Jon Rynne, utilities director for the City of New Bern. “A comprehensive AMI system would also empower customers by providing accurate and near real-time information about rates and consumption, allowing for informed energy usage decisions,” Rynne continued. The AMI system for the City of New Bern would need to offer hardware and software technology capable of supporting existing demand response programs while also enabling new smart grid programs for its customers. The City of New Bern recognized that additional savings could be generated from better monitoring of load management switches in homes, some of which have been disabled or failed over the years. The existing program used a one-way communication technology, which prevented the City of New Bern from verifying the effectiveness of load control devices that were in the field. The city estimated that 40 percent of those old switches had either been disconnected or removed without the utility’s knowledge. This issue led to the utility continuing to provide rebates to customers for participating in its load management program without reaping the benefits because the switch was no longer operating. As a result, the city began the search for an AMI vendor capable of addressing the challenges associated with a full-scale integration across the entire utility.

Solution

Due to extensive experience with demand response projects, the City of New Bern ultimately selected Eaton’s team to help lead a pilot project. The initial area was a representative sample of the City of New Bern’s utility system representing approximately 10 percent of their total metered accounts with 2,100 electric meters, 1,500 water meters and 1,000 demand response devices. As a result of the success of the initial pilot program, the city chose to move forward with Eaton’s Cooper Power series best-in-class two-way RF mesh network as the foundation of its new AMI system. The first stage of the project involved installation of Eaton’s Cooper Power series Yukon enterprise software platform. Next, the smart grid network infrastructure was deployed throughout the city’s service territory, including installation of intelligent electric meters for all customers. The license-free 900 MHz mesh network provides an integrated solution for meter reading, as well as demand response and distribution automation. This enables real-time support on one network for electric, water and gas meters; load control switches; and distribution automation controls. With the new two-way technology, the City of New Bern could not only confirm the amount of load contribution, but also know if a device is disabled, so that they can schedule a trip to reconnect it. The system allows users across all areas of the utility to take advantage of its data acquisition and analysis capabilities. Specific features of Eaton’s solution allow the city to:

• Improve accuracy of billing and enable pre-payment programs

• Monitor voltage conditions in real-time

• Quickly identify outages or unusual usage patterns

• Complete detailed outage analyses

• Reduce labor and time when logging usage data

• Remotely connect and disconnect service locations

Results

To date, the City of New Bern utility department has installed about 7,000 new advanced electric meters and about 3,600 new water meters. The utility also has added 2,000 two-way load management switches, with 10,000 additional installations planned over the next three years. The AMI is greatly enhancing the load management program by allowing the utility to quickly detect specific switches that are disconnected and ensure equipment investments are contributing to the cost saving program. Although the amount of energy saved in each home may be small, the savings quickly add up and the new system allows the utility to easily visualize ways to make continuous enhancements. “One or two kilowatts from 11,000 or 12,000 participating customers adds up to a lot of kilowatts off demand,” Rynne said. “Through the Yukon management system, we can keep a closer eye on usage patterns to enhance the accuracy of our automatic cycling programs.” The system is also saving the utility money by enabling it to read meters and connect or disconnect service remotely, negating the need to send a crew and a truck out to the customer’s house. So far, the City of New Bern has reported more than $236,500 savings from reduced “truck rolls.” The two-way communications is supporting enhanced outage management as well. The City of New Bern is very susceptible to the hurricanes that strike the North Carolina coast, and Rynne expects “tremendous benefits with AMI” when it comes to improving responding to damage after a hurricane or other severe storms. Ultimately, the improvements also contributed to the City of New Bern’s utilities department being recognized in 2016 as one of 191 public power utilities to earn the Reliable Public Power Provider (RP3) designation from the American Public Power Association (APPA) for providing consumers with the highest degree of reliable and safe electric service.